Many years ago a makeup line adopted the slogan – “You’re worth it.” While seemingly simple, for many people it is easy to forget that investing in oneself is a good investment.Whether that investment is in education, enhancing relationships, seeing projects through to completion or working out, you are worth it!

One of the biggest lies that the devil tells us on a regular basis is that somehow, for whatever reason “We aren’t worth it.” The enemy seeks to make people, especially selfless, hardworking people, feel guilty about anything that they do for themselves. Many of you like me may have suffered through seasons of life where you sacrificed your own needs to meet the needs of others. To be clear, I am not speaking of the many sacrifices that spouse make for one other or how (good) parents take seriously the needs of their children. I am talking about the everyday personal care needs that often take a back seat to help others when in fact we will be better for everyone else if we attended to these needs first.

Recently I lost 75 pounds by changing my diet. I, however, simply refused to work out – until I hit a plateau and wasn’t losing anymore weight. I then realized that I was going to have to work out in order to lose the next 75. Annoyed and with an admittedly bad attitude, I joined a gym. After being dragged in the gym by a member of the congregation who is way too happy, way too early in the morning -I began working out.

I soon realized that I wasn’t going to die.Although I was active there was a mental roadblock about working out. I soon realized that even at the first work out I was able to do a few miles on the bike in addition to more than a mile on the treadmill plus weights. It was then that I realized how much time I had wasted not trusting that I could do it and that I was worth it.

One day, I had an early morning appointment to check on someone else. The first thought I had was, “I can’t workout today.” Abandoning my workout wasn’t going to help me and it wasn’t going to help the other person. I recognized that once again I was mentally prepared to do less for myself in order to do more for others.

The reality is that when I take care of myself I am far more able to help others and so we both are blessed by my self-care. I went to work out. I had to abbreviate the workout but I went and that was significant. This concept can be applied to so many areas.

Many people find themselves in difficult financial situations because they have negated their own needs to rescue everyone else. Others have no peace in their home because they are seemingly running a hotel for all of their relatives that don’t feel like paying their own rent. Still others abandon their dreams of an education as they focus solely on today’s paycheck rather than invest in the education needed to make future paychecks much larger.

God, through His son made us worthy. He told each and every one of us that we were fearfully and wonderfully made! Not because we were a certain size, race or complexion but simply because we were made in His image.We look like Him!

Every day you wake up remember that you are worth it! Take time for yourself and get on the path to health and wellness physically, spiritually, financially and emotionally. There are 90,000 adults over 25 in Milwaukee who need to get a G.E.D. before the rules change in December. Yes 90,000. Start working on it! You are worth it. Many of us need a vacation – take it! You’re worth it. Others need to join me at the gym. Come on and join! You’re worth it!

Business leaders in Wisconsin often lament that not enough qualified workers are in the job pool for the jobs that they need to fill – that there is a so-called “skills gap.”

But a new study says that’s simply not the case.

UWM professor Marc Levine just completed his Skills Gap and Unemployment in Wisconsin: Separating Fact from Fiction study to quantify what the skills gap situation is in Wisconsin.

And it comes to a conclusion that flies in the face of the narrative that is often portrayed in the state. A few months ago, Milwaukee Public Radio produced a series of reports on the so-called “skills gap” in Wisconsin – the apparent mismatch between unemployed workers and the jobs that exist. In it, business leaders said there were too few skilled workers to hire, while skeptics argued that the real problem was an unwillingness to pay workers what they’re worth.

After reviewing studies from across the country, Levine says there is virtually no research supporting the existence of a skills gap in Milwaukee. If a skills shortage did exist here, he says we would see higher wages and longer hours – instead we have seen these decline since 2000.

“There’s almost a complete disconnect between the public discourse, the discourse certainly that we see in Wisconsin about the skills gap as if it’s a given from politicians, from media, from business leaders,” he says. “There’s a disconnect between that and the consensus on the other side among trained economists.”

Likewise, we often hear about how future jobs will require a high level of skills, but Levine says occupational projections suggest 70 percent of openings through 2020 will require a high school diploma or less.

Nor do national data on job requirements show that the Milwaukee and Wisconsin labor markets comparatively lack a certain set of skills.

Levine says that’s particularly true in the oft-cited case of the welding industry’s purported inability to find qualified welders here – or as he calls it, “the peculiar case of the missing welder.”

The study instead indicates, “there is no evidence that Wisconsin suffers from a ‘competitive disadvantage’ in the skills of its welding labor force.”

Moreover, Wisconsin welders actually have more educational attainment than the national average.

The study does suggest that there is indeed a high unemployment rate, the leftover of the Great Recession and stagnant job growth.

Data show there are three times as many unemployed workers in the U.S. as there are job openings.

There may be a real skills gap in Wisconsin, but it’s the opposite of what we commonly hear about, Levine says. Too few jobs that require a high level of skill are being created, while the labor market has too many educated workers.

“It is a mismatch of too many highly educated workers chasing too few ‘good jobs,'” the study reads.

What Levine calls “stunning” findings show that a quarter of Milwaukee’s retail salespeople have college degrees – a 14 percent increase since 2000. Sixty percent of the state’s parking lot attendants have some post-secondary education.

That’s the result of rising rates of educational attainment in Wisconsin in the last few decades.

About 90 percent of adult Milwaukeeans graduated from high school, and there are growing numbers of people from all racial and ethnic groups graduated from college.

Levine says there are three main reasons why this “false” narrative of the skills gap persists:

• It’s a “diversionary tactic.”

“This has been an argument that has been raised by corporate America by business leaders on a consistent basis for well over 30 years now,” Levine says.

“So no matter what the macroeconomic conditions are – high unemployment, low unemployment, stagnant wages, rising wages, education standards up…no matter what, we always have a skills shortage. That simply from an economics perspective cannot be.”

Levine says ideological partisans use the skills gap narrative to divert attention away from criticism of macroeconomic policy and how job creation is being managed in the country.

He says it distracts from tougher questions on issues like: off-shoring practices, corporate dis-investment, high unemployment in the face of record corporate profits, and whether the U.S. should be pursuing a bigger stimulus versus austerity policies.

“It diverts us from the real issues of what government can in fact do to deal with unemployment.”

• A “herd mentality” latches on.

Levine says the skills gap meme is an easy explanation for our persistent high unemployment, and it’s an easy line for politicians to use.

• The media repeats it.

Levine says the media, both locally and nationally, haven’t really investigated into the issue and instead simply report what politicians and business leaders are saying.

He says while there is a “vast consensus” of economists that the skills gap theory is false, none of that work has been cited in any of the highly touted reports on the skills gap used here in Wisconsin, such as the so-called “Sullivan report” or the “Be Bold 2.”

Then newspapers repeat what they’ve been told, accepting on “face value” a “default position” on the existence of the skills gap. Levine is a professor of history, and a senior fellow and the founding director of the Center for Economic Development at UWM-Milwaukee.